Three nuns move HC to quash abuse complaint by ex-inmate

MUMBAI: Three nuns of St Catherine’s Home, Andheri (west), a shelter, have moved the Bombay high court seeking to quash a complaint filed by a former inmate who alleged that she was harassed, beaten and thrown out of the Home earlier this year.
Sisters Collette (66), the superintendent; Juliet D’Abreo (54), a principal; and Urmila Chaudhari (36), a staffer, have claimed that the girl lodged an FIR on March 30 at the instigation of a former social worker with the Home and that she never complained about the management and staff when she was at the Home.
The trio were booked under IPC sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 509 (word, gesture or act intending to insult the modesty of a woman). The girl claimed she was thrown out of the Home on March 28 and referred to two incidents in February. In the first incident, when she was going towards a church next door to drink water, she was allegedly stopped, beaten and made to write “sorry” a hundred times. In the second incident, she said a nun called her a bad name for laughing when a fellow-inmate caught the nun taking photos of them in night dress.